


Confused Identities

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Friendship, Gen, Identities, references to alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 07:34:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26469511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Sacherell and Douglass are best friends whose identities bleed and blur together. Or my take on the  In the Hand of the Goddess squire swap with Sacherell and Douglass.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Confused Identities

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "Fix it" event at Goldenlake.

Confused Identities

Midwinter was approaching, and eighteen-year-old Sacherell of Wellam was considering his confused identities almost as much as he was brooding over his impending Ordeal of Knighthood. Perched in a window seat, his breath misting the glass that gazed out over the castle grounds covered with the first snowfall of the season and the distant, leafless trees of the Royal Forest, Sacherell thought that he was only linking his confused identities to his looming Ordeal because his knightmaster, Sir Gary of Naxen, had done so yesterday when he urged Sacherell to define who he was before he entered the Chamber of the Ordeal or else the Chamber would eat him alive. 

“Sacherell,” Gary had said to him yesterday, his tone and eyes so serious Sacherell’s stomach had sunk. Anything that made his mischievous knightmaster somber had to be Trouble with a very deliberate capital T. “I’ve been thinking that maybe I did you no favors when I treated you switching between being my squire and Raoul’s as a joke, because it only made you more muddled about who you are—where you stop and where Douglass begins. I should’ve been more definite that you were my squire, so you would know exactly who you are.” 

“I didn’t starting switching between being your squire and being Raoul’s as a joke, sir. I started switching to being Raoul’s squire whenever being Raoul’s squire became too much for Douglass.” His cheeks burning with shame—as if he were the drunkard or the squire of the drunkard—Sacherell skated around stating that being Raoul’s squire only became too much for Douglass when Raoul had tipped back too many glasses of wine at the banquets he hated attending. As the best skater in the palace, Sacherell was very accomplished at skating around awkward, ungainly things. 

Gary would understand what he was referring to, because he had to see how Raoul was plied with drinks to control his temper at court functions and how often Raoul would have to stumble like a great, irritable bear to the healers’ wing for a hangover cure when he woke up, grumpy and befuddled, in the afternoon instead of the morning. He had to see that, and like Sacherell, choose to skate around it with his words. 

“Whatever your reasons for swapping places with Douglass, it’s only made you more confused about your identity.” Gary sighed and tugged at the mustache he had begun growing years ago when he had decided that it was the height of fashion and the secret to attracting ladies like pollen drew bees. 

Privately Sacherell thought of it as a fuzzy caterpillar mustache. Years ago, when Gary first started growing the mustache, Sacherell had made the mistake of sharing this idea with his knightmaster when Gary had asked how his mustache looked. His knightmaster had not appreciated this frank feedback and had volunteered him for a week’s worth of mucking out stables and cleaning out latrines. After that, Sacherell had kept any caterpillar mustache comments confined between his own two ears, because Gary was apparently very sensitive to teasing about his mustache. Perhaps he was not certain it was as dashing as he hoped though it had earned the recent admiration of Lady Cythera, the most beautiful of the court ladies. 

Sacherell was torn from his musings on Gary’s caterpillar mustache as Gary continued, “You can’t walk into the Chamber not knowing who you are. It’ll eat you alive if you do. You must know who you are before you enter the Chamber so that you’ll be ready to serve the realm as a knight. Do you understand what I’m saying?” 

“Yes,” Sacherell answered. What Gary spoke of wasn’t such a complicated concept. At least he had thought that at the time. Now, sitting on the window seat and staring out at the snow, he realized that untangling his identity from Douglass’s was more difficult than he could have imagined. 

“Good.” Gary had nodded decisively and that was how Sacherell had come to find himself questioning his very identity now. “You’ll spend the time before your Ordeal reflecting on who you are and what matters to you. Then you will be ready to step into the Chamber.” 

His finger trailing through the fog of his breath on the window pane, tracing the shape of a horse and the knight in shining armor he hoped to become if he passed his Ordeal, Sacherell reflected that his confusion about who he was must have started when he became a page at the same time as Douglass. 

The beginning of page training was ill-defined. There was no official date when everyone born in a particular year started at the same time. They showed up at scattered times throughout the year at the whims and orders of their fathers. That idiosyncrasy hadn’t seemed important when Sacherell began his page training, but now that he was trying to organize the jumbled puzzle pieces of who he was, it felt significant. 

He and Douglass had started page training only days apart. They had learned to navigate the palace together—Sacherell sponsored by Francis of Nond, who had died of the Sweating Sickness years ago, and Douglass by Raoul of Goldenlake, who would go on to become his knightmaster. It would be months before Alan of Trebond would show up, and Geoffrey of Meron would arrive even later, rounding out the small cohort of their year to the respectable, even number of four. Four was a stable number—the supporting legs of a table or chair. Three was an odd number that made one think of wobbly furniture. 

Since they had started page training mere days apart, it had been natural as breathing for Sacherell and Douglass to spend all their time together. They studied together, practiced skills with one another as they learned the fighting techniques a knight of the realm was expected to know like the back of his hand, shoved food down their throats side by side after waiting on their assigned nobles at dinner, and developed jokes only each other could understand. They always walked beside each other, their steps seamlessly falling right in time with one another. 

They were so close that of course their identities had bled together. So close that their fellow pages and even their teachers began to confuse them though Sacherell had dark hair and Douglass blond and though Sacherell was a staunch rule follower due to the strict lessons instilled in him by his stern great-uncle Turomot and Douglass was an unrepentant troublemaker. So close that once Master Oakbridge had reported Sacherell to Duke Gareth for a prank that Douglass had pulled, and Sacherell had taken the punishment—two weeks of extra etiquette lessons—without argument rather than snitch on Douglass. So close that had only deepened their friendship. 

So close that when they became squires they worried about who would choose them, and if they would be separated from one another for long periods of times if their knightmasters did not come into frequent contact with each other. So close that it had seemed a divine intervention that Sacherell should be chosen by Gary and Douglass by Raoul because Gary and Raoul had a friendship forged in the pages’ wing and often spent time together. 

The cracks and fissures in that idyll emerged as Raoul’s drunkard tendencies reared their ugly head when he had been knighted. 

“I can’t take this any more, Sacherell.” Douglass’s voice was flat and purple bags sagged under his eyes, which were dry as if he had cried out all his tears. “Raoul’s an easygoing enough knightmaster when he’s not drunk, but he’s drunk too cursed much, and when he’s drunk, he’s like an enraged boar.” 

Desperate to help his miserable friend in any way he could, inspiration struck Sacherell like a bolt of lightning, and he declared, “We’ll switch places.” 

“What?” Douglass’s question was exhausted and bewildered. 

“I’ll be Raoul’s squire for awhile, and you can be Gary’s,” Sacherell explained with exaggerated slowness. “That way you’ll get the break you need, and nobody’ll care. Everyone’s always confusing us anyway.” 

“What’ll Raoul say?” Douglass arched a dubious eyebrow. 

“If he’s drunk enough, he might not even notice I’m not you.” Sacherell shrugged. Raoul wasn’t his concern now. Douglass was. 

“And what’ll Gary say?” Douglass pressed. 

“He’ll laugh and think it’s a grand joke.” Sacherell grinned. His keen-witted knightmaster was famous for his acute fondness for both harmless and not so harmless pranks. “He’ll be happy to discover that I’m actually capable of engaging in high-level trickery.”

“Oh, very well, on your own head be it,” Douglass agreed, though his tone was snappish, Sacherell suspected that was only because he couldn’t express how grateful he was. Squires did not engage in sappy conversation with each other. Sappiness was to be reserved for the fainting court flowers. 

Sacherell only had cause to regret his decision after he had supported a tottering, incoherently mumbling Raoul to bed after a night’s overindulgence in Tyran wine. 

“Thanks for bringing me to bed, Francis.” Raoul’s speech was so slurred that Sacherell could pretend not to hear the name he was called so that he wouldn’t have to correct the large knight who could crumble so easily. So he didn’t have to point out that Francis was dead and had been for years now. 

So he didn’t have to remind Raoul of the bottomless sorrow that he must be seeking to drown night after night in wine. Francis had been Raoul’s silent shadow, Sacherell remembered. Perhaps his identity had gotten so tangled up with Raoul’s that Raoul could only drink to keep the grief at bay because when he was drunk his dead friend lived again in his intoxicated mind. Perhaps his friendship with Francis had been deep and entwined as Sacherell’s with Douglass, and maybe Sacherell would collapse into the same drunkard shell if he lost Douglass. It was a thought that prickled his skin with cold goosebumps. 

Eventually, after too many nights escorting a weaving Raoul clearly suffering from impaired coordination and blurred vision back to his quarters, Sacherell was relieved of this unpleasant duty when Douglass decided that he was strong enough to return to being Raoul’s squire again. 

When the swap was completed, Gary greeted him with a cheery clap on the shoulder. “Douglass told me that the switch was your idea. Nice to know that you do have a twisted sense of humor after all. I was starting to worry about that.” 

Gary had indeed encouraged the swap, Sacherell reflected at the window on the cusp of knighthood, and he had known how inebriated Raoul often was, but he had turned a blind eye to his friend’s addiction either because it was easier not to say anything or because he didn’t know what to say. 

Sacherell was seized by the sudden desire to confront his knightmaster about this, even though he was usually the person who wouldn’t dare to squeak at a mouse. 

Before he lost his courage, he stepped into his knightmaster’s study, where Gary’s nose was buried in a thick tome on inheritance laws in Maren that made Sacherell want to yawn after just reading the title. Gary was truly dauntless when it came to devouring books. 

“Yes?” Gary marked his page carefully before focusing his attention on Sacherell. 

“I’ve been thinking about what you said—that I need to know who I am,” Sacherell burst out, shocking himself with how raw he sounded. The very words cut his throats like knives as he forced them out of the hidden, unacknowledged depths of his being. “The problem is I don’t know who I am. I mean, I know I’m Sacherell of Wellam, but I don’t know who Sacherell of Wellam is, and I thought maybe you could help me figure out who Sacherell of Wellam is.” 

“I can’t help you with that.” Gary shook his head. “You have to figure out who you are for yourself. Your identity is a definition you must write for yourself with your own pen.” 

That frustrating, unilluminating answer made no sense to Sacherell. “Couldn’t you at least tell me why you chose me as your squire and not Douglass?” 

There had to be a reason Gary picked him. Something that made him unique and different from Douglass. Maybe that would tell him how he should define himself. 

“I chose you because you’re cleverer and more perceptive than Douglass.” Gary’s smile was wry. “Also you’re less trouble.” 

“I’m not clever at all.” Sacherell tore at his hair. “If I were clever, I’d have known what to do when Douglass came to me about his knightmaster drinking all the time, but I didn’t know what to do, and that’s why I came up with the squire swap, because I was just so desperate to do something—anything.” 

Drinking. There. He had voiced the word that had always hung unspoken in the air between them when they talked of Raoul. Surprisingly, it wasn’t horrifying to say it. Instead, it was a release of tension and denial at long last as the truth finally flowed from him like pent water freed from a dam to roar down a riverbank. 

“That has nothing to do with cleverness, Sacherell. I didn’t know what to do either.” Gary’s smile had disappeared, and his expression was suddenly grave. “I didn’t know how to help Raoul, Douglass, or you, so I pretended that I didn’t notice how often Raoul was drunk. I’m sorry if you felt you could come to me for help solving this problem, because I always want you to think you can come to me for help solving any problem even when you aren’t my squire any more.” 

“I suppose none of us knew what to do.” Sacherell bit his lip, thinking that probably none of them—him, Gary, Douglass, or Raoul—knew what to do and that he would somehow have to find peace with that collective ignorance. “I guess we’ll have to forgive ourselves for that.” 

“See, I said you were clever, and comments like that are why I said so.” Gary nodded, a faint, smug grin returning to his features. 

Clever. Sacherell grabbed the word from the air and held it in his chest, breathing it in deeply so that it entered his very soul, pervading him and instilling him with its confidence. He was clever, and he would emerge from his confusion to discover his identity before he stepped into the Chamber of the Ordeal.


End file.
